Friday, February 11, 2011

Guest Poet: Howie Good

Imaginary Crimes

1
He was a man who liked to appear in public with a red face and drooping black moustache. What’s my last name? he’d ask strangers. His satchel was the only clue. It didn’t seem big enough to contain so much darkness.

2
I followed the sound of champagne music. The door was open and the radio on, and then the room spun like the cylinder of a revolver.

3
Most came dressed as who they were – stickup men in black ski masks, burnouts with gray ponytails. Those who didn’t were ordered to stand on the rain-snow line. The last time I saw Fat Nancy her double chin was trembling. If we can’t be honest, I told her, we can still be truthful.

Howie Good is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011), as well as 26 print and digital poetry chapbooks, including the most recent Disaster Mode from Medulla Publishing and The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre from Gold Wake Press.